Global Inheritance Marketing Green to Gen Y

According to research from Mintel International, companies spend more than $1 billion a year on cause-related marketing, much of it increasingly going to green-related issues. But they need someone to help get their green message out to a younger audience.

This Redding.com piece notes that one of the people they’re turning to is Eric Ritz, a former advertising and marketing executive who quit his job six years ago to start Global Inheritance, an organization that markets itself to be reinventing activism for a younger generation.

Ritz is famous for eye-grabbing environmental performance art at events, such as a green-themed chess game with human pieces and bicycle-powered cell phone charging units. He’s also the guy who came up with the Jiffy Pop “tree,” at the Coachella Music Festival–a tree with branches holding packages of Jiffy Pop and an eco-friendly ethanol-powered hibachi grill to cook them.

What makes Ritz’s activism different is that he and his Generation Y audience don’t see big business as the enemy, according to the article. “You have to work within the system to have the most impact.” That’s why companies such as Fuel TV look to hire him. That, and one other reason: “He’s reaching an audience that’s pretty cynical,” said Jake Money of Fuel TV, “and he’s pretty successful at it.”